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Thursday, August 9, 2012

C2000 Launchpad - Code - First look

I finally managed to have my C2000 Launchpad up&running with CCS V5_2.

The process was not really smooth for me as I initially had double entries in controlSuite and the C2000 Launchpad examples were not showing up in CCS (but they were there if I opened controlSuite externally).

I had to uninstall everything (for controlSuite a manual delete of the files since there is no uninstall, or at least I was not able to find it).

On windows 7 64 bit few things did not work (i.e. CCS was not able to update etc) until I realized I had to run the install and later the software as Administrator.
That did the trick, both for controlSuite install and for CCS install / update.

Phew...
If you follow the instructions on the video available on the TI website, you can open the example from the Resource Explorer, load the project etc...

At step 3 I was not really sure which connection to choose, the XDS100V1 USB worked for me


Also, I switched back the 3rd dip switch to "high" since in the TI video by Trey German (thanks Trey, cool stuff! looking forward for more of your videos!) there is a mention to the fact that enables /disables the jtag debug interface.

So, compiled and debugged, no issues there.

Following the code you immediately realize, if you played before with the "little brother" MSP430G2 Launchpad, that the "piccolo" is totally another animal.

Code appears immediately mode "high level", as I expected, in line with what I found dealing with the Cortex M3 I played with.

Code seems quite "elegant" (not that I don't like the "hardcore" style of the MSP430 code, I actually love it) and probably designed to better fit in bigger applications.

This is the loop that manages the sequential blinking of the blue leds in the pre-installed demo


  //Scan the LEDs until the pushbutton is pressed
    while(GPIO_getData(myGpio, GPIO_Number_12) != 1)
    {       
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(50000);

        GPIO_setLow(myGpio, GPIO_Number_0);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_1);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_2);
        GPIO_setHigh(myGpio, GPIO_Number_3);
        DELAY_US(500000);
    }

I would say it is definitely readable and you don't need to know the names of the registers to make sense of it.

It appears that they used a good naming convention where all the calls are prefixed with the name of the involved peripheral, which will be GPIO, ADC, CLK...

And check this :


    fid = fopen("scia","w");
    freopen("scia:", "w", stdout);
    setvbuf(stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0);

Oh yeah, that's your serial port saying "hello" there.
How to configure the baud rate?


#if (CPU_FRQ_60MHZ)
    SCI_setBaudRate(mySci, SCI_BaudRate_115_2_kBaud);  

Want to send some bytes over the serial port?

void updateTemperature(void)
{
    // Restore cursor position
    putchar(0x1B);
    putchar('[');
    putchar('u');  
    printf("%d Celcius = Ref + %d ", currentTemp, (currentTemp - referenceTemp));   
}


Honestly I found really cool with the MSP430G2 USCI to be able to set the parameters for modulation etc... but, ok, this looks way easier.
All this is possible with the support of  various header files, there is one for each peripheral

Overall, first impression : thumbs up!


4 comments:

Trey German said...

Glad to hear you like the driver library and coding style. Its a major departure from what we've done in the past, so I'm glad to hear you like it. Keep up the good work on the tutorials. I'll link them on the C2000 LaunchPad Wiki page.

Happy Hacking!
Trey German

Franz said...

Thanks Trey, I like the new approach, I think it is a proper "style" for rather complex applications, which can indeed be created with these devices.
Planning some more experiments in the near future, will share them here.
I am also waiting for a couple of Stellaris launchpads (taking some time to arrive...) then I will try to compare them with the c2000.

Francesco Agosti

NolanSnell said...

Don't you think this projects' inability to receive data is a major problem?

Also the fact it uses printf to transmit, versus using any of the serial routines it should be demonstrating?

Franz said...

Well, it should be good enough to give you an headstart, it was useful to me.
I normally prefer something simple at the beginning and then eventually see improvements in subsequent, more advanced projects.

As usual, your mileage may vary.